


Common Tongue

by MissjuliaMiriam



Series: a cure i know that soothes the soul [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Embedded Images, Eventual Happy Ending, Ignores S2 Canon, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not-So-Functional Exes, Other, Poisoning, Risky sexual behaviour, Sickfic (sort of), TW: Canon-Typical Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues, Truth Serum, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-25 04:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17718332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam
Summary: Juno would be the first to admit that the last year of his life has been pretty shit, but having Peter Nureyev appear, sick and unwillingly honest and in need of help,reallydoes not make anything better.This fic entirely ignores the events of S2.--Also, written for the 2018-19 Penumbra Minibang! Feat. art by the amazing Specialtater.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been excited to post this for WEEKS. Thank you to everyone involved with the TPP Minibang, especially Karin and Bri for organizing. You all have bolstered me in my writing so much during the last few weeks.
> 
> I'd also like to give a HUGE shoutout to [Specialtater](http://specialtater.tumblr.com/), who stepped in last minute and has produced such incredibly beautiful art, the first piece of which you can see embedded in the first chapter - and there's more to come!
> 
> The trigger warnings for this fic are fairly clear in the tags, but to reiterate, this fic deals a lot with Juno's overall mental health problems, specifically his garbage coping mechanisms, including substance abuse and risky sexual behaviour. If that will bother you, feel free to skip this one!
> 
> (Title is from Hozier's "Common Tongue", which is great and everyone should listen to it. It's mostly a truth serum joke, because I'm incapable of serious titles on serious fics.)
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy! This fic has five chapters and will (probably) update every other day.

Juno comes home on a Thursday to the sound of someone throwing up in his bathroom. This is unusual, not because people rarely throw up in his bathroom, but because usually it’s him, and he is, for once, feeling okay. Physically, at least; emotionally he has to admit that he’s pretty freaked out that someone has broken into his apartment apparently for the sole purpose of being violently sick into his toilet. Or possibly his bathtub; he hasn’t checked yet.

He gets out his blaster and makes his way cautiously through the apartment, checking around corners. One of the windows in his living room has been left open; his home invader is not subtle.

He checks the bathroom last, though he keeps its door in his peripheral vision. By then, the sound of retching has stopped and been replaced by quiet, raspy breathing. If Juno hadn’t been listening for it, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it at all, but it’s enough for him to know that the invader hasn’t gone anywhere. So he comes up to the cracked bathroom door, takes a silent steadying breath, and then kicks it open, bringing his gun to bear at the same moment.

“Hands up, or I—” Juno stops. Stares.

Kneeling on the floor of his bathroom is Peter Nureyev, looking more bedraggled than Juno has ever seen him, even more than he had been after days on the dusty floor of an ancient Martian tomb. He’s pale, the veins on the side of his neck standing out stark and blue, and when he turns to look at Juno there are dark bags visible under his eyes. His glasses have been discarded haphazardly onto the bathroom floor beside the toilet, presumably to prevent salt stains from the tears on Nureyev’s face; if the sounds from earlier were any indication, the source of those was the force of the vomiting.

Nureyev pushes himself up slightly, away from the edge of the toilet, and takes a deeper rasping breath. “Juno,” he says. “I’m… glad I found the right apartment.”

“ _Nureyev_?” Juno replies, for lack of anything better to say.

“Hold on a moment, please.” Nureyev reaches into a pocket of his long coat—it should be tan canvas and stylish, but it’s terribly stained; also highly uncharacteristic—and pulls out a syringe. Juno tenses, but before he has time to do anything, Nureyev has put it back down on the bathroom floor and said, “I don’t suppose you could help me with this.”

“What?”

Nureyev sighs. “Or I could do it myself. Please don’t shoot me for a moment.”

Juno watches, stunned, as Nureyev shrugs out of his coat, his motions jerky and weak, as if he’s barely in control of his limbs, and digs around in its pockets. Eventually he pulls out an elastic tie, and goes through the motions of making a tourniquet, his hands much less deft than Juno remembers them being. Then he picks up the syringe again and before Juno can stop him—can even register that he probably _should_ stop him, because apparently Nureyev has become a junkie and decided that Juno’s own damned apartment is a safe place to shoot up—he finds a vein _somehow_ with his shaking hands and injects himself.

“What the _hell_ , Nureyev,” Juno says, and flips the safety back on on his gun, then flings it onto the bathroom counter. He doesn’t throw himself to his knees by Nureyev’s side, or anything equally dramatic; he just stares. “What—”

“I suppose I should have explained first,” Nureyev says, sounding suddenly exhausted. “It’s just, well, I wasn’t sure that I had much time. And since you weren’t being helpful…”

“I—Nureyev, I haven’t seen you in months! You can’t just show up out of the blue and expect me to _enable_ you!” Juno shouts.

“Mm,” says Nureyev. “Yes. Well. Ah, Juno, I’m going to pass out now. I’ll explain when I wake up, probably in more detail than I’d like to.”

Then he does as promised, leaving Juno with an empty syringe, a gun, and the unconscious body of a man who might have been his lover.

“Fuck,” says Juno. He hauls Peter to the couch, sets the syringe aside to be disposed of safely (and discretely, because he’s not an idiot… or a _complete_ asshole), and goes to pour himself a drink.

* * *

* * *

 

Nureyev is out for about two hours. It’s less time than Juno expected, really; he passed out hard. Getting him onto the couch had been a bit of a challenge—Nureyev is tall and about 60% limbs, and Juno, for all that he’s strong, is short. Still, he’d managed, and he’d had a few fingers of whiskey in an effort to regain his nerve; he’s nursing his second glass when Nureyev abruptly stirs on the couch and then groans and says, “Juno?”

“Yeah,” Juno says. He puts his glass down on the floor and leans forward in his chair. He’d dragged it over from the dining room and set it across from the couch, because sitting on the floor made him feel like an idiot but he wasn’t willing to _not_ watch Nureyev, just in case he turned into mist and floated out the window, or turned out to be another hallucination.

(That had been a bad week.)

“Hello,” Nureyev says, and turns his head to look at Juno through half-lidded eyes. He still looks kind of drugged, his gaze unfocused. One of his arms is sprawled halfway off the couch, his hand limp and still trembling faintly.

“What the hell have you gotten yourself hooked on?” Juno asks bluntly.

“Hooked…? Oh! No,” Nureyev says. His voice is a bit thready, slow and tense from some poorly-hidden pain and tiredness. “No, not at all, though I can see where you got that idea. No, that was an antidote to a rather deadly poison.”

Juno stares at him. “And why are you _here_? Don’t you have a safehouse?”

“I did,” Nureyev says. His tone is… extremely mild. “That’s where I was poisoned, however, so I wouldn’t really call it _safe_ any more.”

That’s fair. Juno grunts. “Okay. That doesn’t answer why you came here instead of going to some _other_ safehouse. Was your identity compromised?”

“Only in that I had to burn the alias I was using. Or rather, it was burned rather effectively for me. Hopefully they now think that Basil Charles is now quite dead, however.” Nureyev sighs. “My next closest safehouse is off planet, and Peter Nureyev would also have been quite dead if I’d tried to get there before administering the antidote.”

“Why were you on Mars in the first place?”

Nureyev makes… some attempt, it seems, to wave his hand in the air in a blase manner. He gets as far as getting his hand up and then it flops back against his chest; he glances down at it and sighs. “Oh, theft,” he says. “The usual. In any case: I came here, Juno, because I will be utterly useless for the next few days, as you can see from my inability to effectively prop up even so much as one hand, never mind standing. Muscle weakness caused by the poison, you see, as well as illness as my body finishes fighting it off. The antidote will ensure I survive, but it’s not a straightforward cure, this one. It’s really very frustrating, and I do apologize for putting this on you, but I really had no choice. In case you hadn’t noticed, the antidote’s interaction with the lingering neurotoxin is known to produce a truth-serum like effect, and so aside from not being able to be alone, I also cannot afford to be with anyone whom I do not trust with my secrets. Which leaves me with you, Juno. You are the sole living person in the universe who knows me by my birth name, and whatever you think of me, you have not betrayed me; thus, you are the only one I could have come to, for lack of anyone else, other than myself, whom I trust. So… here we are, I suppose.”

Nureyev is out of breath and looks quite relieved to have stopped talking by the end of that monologue, and Juno can’t help but agree with the feeling. That was… a lot.

“Uh,” says Juno.

“I’m very sorry,” says Nureyev, quietly. “Trust me when I say I would rather be saying _much less_ than all of that. Or even all of this.”

Juno just… looks at him. He doesn’t really know what the hell to say to any of that, but eventually he figures he’s going to have to say _something_. So he says, “Okay.” That’s a dumbass thing to say, so he follows up with, “I… right. Well, I’m not going to kick you out. And I’ll… buy groceries, or whatever. Do you need anything? How long will you be out of commission?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Nureyev says. “A few days, at least, as I said. At least three, not more than ten, though it’s possible it’ll be as much as a week. I feel frankly awful at the moment but within a few hours I should have enough mobility at least to get to the bathroom. If you were to bring food into the house, I can provide for myself that way, but I won’t be able to stand long enough to go out. I could cook for you too, if you’d like.”

Juno shrugs, uncomfortable. The whole idea—Nureyev in his apartment, in his _kitchen_ , cooking for him, keeping house while he’s at work like some sort of housespouse—it feels too much like something out of a dream. Or a nightmare, if Nureyev were to pick up a kitchen knife and stab him with it. He’s definitely dreamed that one a few times. He’ll probably dream it tonight, unless he gets _extremely_ drunk. Which he probably should not do with a recuperating poisoning victim on his couch, but it’s not like his middle name is “Good Decisions”.

“Whatever,” Juno says, finally. “Listen, stay here for a minute. You can take the bed.”

“Juno—”

“It’s fine.” Juno gets up and walks away before Nureyev can say anything else. Probably Nureyev is just as grateful not to have an audience for his babbling as Juno is not to _be_ that audience.

He goes into the bedroom and closes the door slightly (leaves it ajar, just in case) and shoves the oncoming anxiety attack back down into his chest for a while longer. He’ll… do that later. His emotions can wait; Nureyev needs somewhere to sleep other than Juno’s shitty couch, which will fuck up that long, graceful spine in a matter of hours, never mind a _week_. (A fucking week. He’s going to lose his mind.) Once he has a handle on himself again, he goes and strips the sheets off the bed and bundles them into the laundry basket. He has clean sheets, because while he hasn’t washed anything non-essential in an almost embarrassing amount of time, he also hasn’t changed his sheets in at least that long. It takes a few minutes to wrestle the fitted sheet onto the mattress and to take out a bit of his pent-up… everything… on the pillows, and then he goes back out into the living room and says, “Okay.”

Nureyev seems to have halfway drifted back to sleep, his breathing shallow and audibly laboured, but he rouses and does his best to make his limbs cooperate when Juno hauls him up off the couch. “Sorry,” he says, as they stumble their way into the bedroom. “Would that I were less of an invalid.”

“Not your fault,” Juno grunts and topples Nureyev onto the bed. He sort of bounces, and then arranges himself with clear effort into a more comfortable position.

“It’s definitely my fault,” Nureyev says. “I’ve gotten careless, I think. I haven’t been on my game, not really, since before you left me, dear detective.” Then he sighs and says, “This really is unfortunate.”

Juno just nods. “I’ll try to keep out of earshot.”

Nureyev’s smile is tight with clear pain and exhaustion. “Thank you, Juno.” Then he shuffles a little more on the bed and turns his back, clearly getting comfortable for sleep. Juno pointedly does _not_ think about the last time he walked out of a room with Peter Nureyev sleeping in it and goes to the living room, where his half-finished drink is waiting for him. He can’t get blackout drunk, because if Nureyev needs anything he’ll have to have _some_ wits about him, but if he’s going to sleep at all he’ll need _something_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art once again courtesy of the extremely lovely and talented Specialtater. Also, I forgot to mention this in the last chapter, but a HUGE thanks to ginnie-darling for the beta!

Juno only lasts a day, long enough for Peter to gain enough strength to move around by himself, before fleeing the apartment, leaving Peter alone. He says he’s going to the office, which Peter… believes, tentatively. It’s difficult to say with Juno, really; especially this Juno, who looks exhausted and flighty, even more so than he did after escaping that damned Martian tomb. If Juno had looked like this on that final night, maybe Peter would have expected him to run, but… he didn’t. He hadn’t. Peter is currently forced to tell the truth out loud, far from his preference, but he’s never lied to himself. He can admit how much it stung—burned, _hurt_ —to wake up alone. He shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet.

Now, however, he’s found himself back in Juno Steel’s orbit. Two days ago, half-dead and delirious, there had been nowhere else in the world he could imagine that would be as safe for him as Juno Steel’s apartment. Now… well. He still cannot imagine any place safer, but he’s not sure that this is _safe_. Not for his heart, though he’s sure Juno will allow no further harm to come to him physically.

Peter will just have to make the best of it. Perhaps… well, he doesn’t dare dream of a true reconciliation, much as he wants it, but he can hope at least that Juno will say that they might be friends. Peter has kept his promise so far, that Juno would never have to see him again if he so wished; if not for the dire circumstances he’d found himself in, he would still be keeping it. He wants to no longer be held to it, but he’ll need to have that permission from Juno himself.

Something to work on over the next few days. It’s not like he’s going anywhere, pinned as he is by the weakness of his limbs and the nausea that still plagues him. For the time being, he familiarizes himself with the climes of Juno’s apartment—it’s not large, and currently cluttered. More than cluttered, really; the spaces are dirty, carelessly messy in a way that Peter wouldn’t have expected from Juno. He can’t dig around very much just yet, on account of not yet having the detailed attention and careful touch necessary to put things back where he’d found them if he moves anything that he shouldn’t have touched in the first place, but the surface level is enough to tell him a number of things about Juno’s life. For one, it’s clear that Juno either spends very little time in his apartment, enough that living in poor conditions doesn’t matter, or he’s let housework go as unimportant.

Once Peter can stand for more than ten minutes at a stretch without collapsing, he goes about fixing some of that. He doesn’t think Juno will mind terribly if he comes home to a tidier apartment. He does dishes and sorts laundry, though he’s not sure where to take it once the whites are piled apart from the colours; he also digs out a few clean, soft t-shirts to borrow from the back of a wardrobe that will fit him loosely enough that he can get in and out of them without struggle, because the only shirt of his own that he currently has is a tidy button-up that is fashionable but not especially comfortable for convalescence. Hopefully Juno won’t mind his borrowing the clothes. He tidies the recycling basket, which contains nothing but a few empty liquor bottles, and throws out spoiled milk and a carton of moldy leftovers from the fridge. Juno had promised to bring groceries home after work.

Then Peter has to collapse on the couch for a while, feeling dizzy and sick despite having taken breaks between tasks to recover his breath and attempt to reduce the soreness, and takes the opportunity to consider what he’s seen. He’s surprised, honestly, to see that someone as self-sufficient as Juno Steel is apparently either unwilling or unable to take care of himself. Then he realizes, and curses his brain, slowed by pain and heavy, dragging exhaustion and the toll of dehydration and hunger caused by incessant sickness, for taking so long to put the pieces together: most likely it’s some combination of both. It’s not like he’s unaware of Juno’s unflinching willingness to sacrifice himself; perhaps in a more domestic context, that extends to simple neglect. It’s… sad, honestly. And _frustrating_. Peter’s not sure how he’s going to keep it behind his teeth when Juno returns that he finds it deeply aggravating that Juno turned down the galaxy and all its greatest wonders for _this_. It’s not a fair sentiment, of course. He understands that this is likely just another manifestation of Juno’s troubled mental state, which he’s seen in action a number of times before, but he offered Juno _everything_ and Juno walked away to wallow in misery. Apparently.

It was stupid, of course, but Peter had hoped—had let himself believe—that Juno had left because he had… ambitions. Or _something_. Anything tying him to his life here that was more compelling that the future Peter had wanted to give him. But it looks like the only thing keeping Juno on Mars is the albatross around his neck. It’s deeply unsatisfying, and Peter is still trying to figure out how to bring it up diplomatically when Juno comes home carrying groceries.

 _Damn it_ , Peter thinks, and is not able to stop himself from saying, “Hello, Juno. I hope you don’t mind that I cleaned up a bit.” Which is… not as bad as he had expected to come out of his mouth. It could have been, “I’m shocked that you’re willing to live in such a state; I thought you had more self respect.”

Fuck.

Juno stares for a long moment, stunned, and then he glares. “I brought you some damn groceries,” he grits out. “Sorry my kitchen isn’t up to your _standards_ , Nureyev.”

“It’s not about my standards,” Peter says. “I’d just hoped that if you were going to turn down my offer of a better life by my side, it was because you didn’t _need_ a better life and not because you didn’t need _me_.”

“It had nothing to do with you.”

“Oh,” Peter says, scathing, “I’m _sure_ it didn’t. Well, no worries, dear detective. I’ll be out of your life again soon enough, and I’ll take all of my concern and my affection with me.”

Juno drops the groceries; from the terrible crunch, there might have been eggs in one of the bags. Well, not anymore. “I never _asked_ for your concern, Nureyev!” he shouts. “I never asked for anything from you, and I don’t want you to give me anything, either! Do _not_ clean my house. Just leave it alone. I lived a whole life before you, and I’ve been doing just fine since.”

“This isn’t _living_ , Juno!”

“It’s how _I_ live, Nureyev.” Juno takes a slow breath, clearly trying to calm himself, then points firmly at Peter. “You don’t get to show up out of the blue after more than a year and _dictate_ to me.”

“You made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome in your life, detective,” Peter says. “In an ideal world I would have been kinder about your circumstances, but unfortunately for the both of us, I’m not currently able to do so. I am confronted with your frankly dismal surroundings, and I don’t have the ability to stop myself from telling you that I find them frustrating.”

“Oh, _frustrating_? That’s cute,” Juno scoffs, glaring.

“You can’t claim that you enjoy living like this, Juno!” Peter hates that he’s raised his voice but he can’t _stop_ himself; it’s so infuriating. His whole body is sore and weak, and he can’t keep himself from saying exactly what he thinks when he’s built a whole life on _never_ telling people what he thinks, and Juno wants to have a _fight_ more than he wants to have a good life. Peter _hates_ it.

“Enjoying it isn’t the point, Nureyev!” Juno shouts back, and Peter sits bolt upright on the couch, never mind that it feels like all the connective tissue between his ribs catches on fire all at once as he does it.

“Then what _is_ the point?” he demands. His heart is racing, and he can feel it pounding in his chest, can feel his hands shaking—all signs of his anger that he would never show if he were not so weak. But even sitting up and speaking feels like it takes as much as he has in him, never mind hiding his emotions, and that in itself adds to his frustration.

“The point is I can’t afford _nice things_ all the time because I’m not a god damn criminal!”

“Doing laundry is not about being able to _afford_ it. I was able to wash my own clothing even when I was a starving child on the streets of Brahma.” Juno flinches and so does Peter and he couldn’t have stopped himself from saying it so he chooses to not regret it and instead bulldozes onward. “Don’t try to fool me, Juno, and don’t lie to yourself: we both know that this—living the way you do—has nothing to do with money and everything to do with being depressed.”

There’s a long pause, where Peter gasps in a shallow breath and tries to recover from the rush of words that has poured out of him and Juno stares at him. And then Juno turns away to stare at the wall and says, “I’m not talking about this. Especially not with you.”

That seems reasonable. Unfortunately, Peter says, “No? Do you think that—”

“I said I’m not _fucking_ talking about this!” Juno shouts, suddenly loud where he’d been quiet a moment before. It’s enough to startle Peter into closing his foolish mouth, his mind gone blank for a brief moment. Thank heavens. Juno seems startled too by the sudden violence in his tone, and he recoils. “Fuck. Never mind. I’m going out—there’re the groceries; if you’re so _functional_ you can feed your own damn self.”

Juno hasn’t even taken off his coat, so it’s easy enough for him to simply turn on his heel and storm out the door. It slams behind him, echoing in Peter’s ears. Peter, left sitting on the couch, sighs and puts his face in his hands.

There’s nothing really to be done about the fact that Juno hates him. He still doesn’t know for sure what exactly Juno saw in his head, but clearly it was enough for him to decide that staying with Peter wasn’t worth it, whatever he might have felt—if he felt anything at all. Of course, of _course_ Peter had wanted for Juno to have a better life, better things waiting for him, and of course he’s frustrated that Juno would choose this… but that that wasn’t the case wasn’t his damn business. He could have followed Juno, but even back then on that morning when he’d woken to cold sheets and nothingness, he’d known full well what it meant.

He’d come here for lack of anywhere else safe to go. Maybe he shouldn’t have, but he wasn’t ready to lay down and die. He’s not ready now, either. So he prys himself slowly up off the couch and fetches the groceries to take into the kitchen. Several of the eggs in the carton Juno bought are, as he had suspected, broken, but the rest have survived alright. There are a few staples, bread and milk and the aforementioned eggs, and then things that Peter can only describe as comfort foods, which makes him ache. Before Juno had had to lay eyes on him and before he had opened his stupid, hopeless mouth, Juno had been thinking of his recovery.

Peter has to stand in the kitchen for a few long minutes, leaning heavily on the counter, and process that. Then he makes himself a can of soup for dinner, and he eats it out of the pan because he’s out of energy for doing very many dishes. Also, Juno had told him not to clean but he doesn’t want to leave a mess, either. So he rinses the pan and leaves it in the sink, and then he lies down on the couch to sleep. He’s made quite enough of an imposition of himself for one day; it doesn’t matter that his still-aching body will surely hate him in the morning.

Around midnight, Peter wakes abruptly and has to force himself off the couch and into the bathroom to throw up. He barely makes it, and once he’s done retching he has to kneel on the bathroom floor for maybe twenty minutes (yet another thing his condition has presently robbed him of: his ability to accurately gauge the passage of time) and recover. His ribs hurt. His back hurts. His throat and stomach hurt. He has a pounding headache, and though he’s not sure the lingering nausea will allow him to get back to sleep, it’s not like there’s anything left in his body. He doesn’t have the energy to find a glass once he does manage to peel himself off the floor, so he leans heavily on the counter and bends his head to drink directly from the sink, rinsing his mouth, and then totters back to the couch.

Shortly after he’s once again wrapped himself as best he can in the couch blanket and curled into a miserable ball on the old, sunken cushions, the door opens. Peter holds himself very still and continues to breathe evenly as he listens. It’s clear after a moment that the newcomer is Juno, which allows him to relax slightly, and he pretends to sleep as Juno curses under his breath while getting out of his boots and coat. Then he walks toward the couch, his gait slightly unsteady, and pauses.

“Oh,” he says, fairly loudly. There’s a moment of hesitation, and then he leans down and touches Peter’s shoulder with terrible gentleness. “Peter.”

Peter shifts as if just awoken and stretches, which hurts abominably, though he tries not to betray it. “Juno?” he says. “What time is it?”

“Late,” Juno says. There’s a strong scent of liquor on his breath. “Go to bed. I mean, take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Peter says. “It’s your bed.”

“You’re sick,” Juno insists. “And you’re… you should—you’re a guest. Go.”

Peter lies there for another moment, looking up at Juno in the darkness. Juno looks back at him, steady and exhausted as he always seems to be, and doesn’t waver. So Peter nods and gets up off the couch. Juno sits down in his place once he’s up and says, “Good night.”

“Sweet dreams, Juno,” Peter says helplessly, and goes off to the bedroom to sleep. He drifts off there much more easily than he would have on the couch, and sleeps long and deeply. When he wakes in the morning, the apartment is quiet and, he finds, empty; the sun has risen and Juno has gone to work.

“Right,” Peter says, washes the dishes in the sink for lack of anything else to do (his pan and a glass which Juno probably used for water), and then goes to see what books Juno might have lying around his apartment.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of an ALL the warnings chapter, namely for slightly dubious consent related to relative levels of intoxication (not between Juno and Peter) and Juno agreeing to sex as a method of self-harm. There's also, consequent to those other things, sexual content in this chapter - relatively non-explicit, but it's there; I chose to rate this fic M rather than E, but it's borderline, so keep that in mind if explicit sex is something you avoid.
> 
> This chapter does have Rita though! YAY, RITA!

The problem with having Peter Nureyev sleeping in his bed and cooking in his damn kitchen is that Juno both constantly and desperately wants a drink, and also can’t drink in his own home. If he gets drunk around Nureyev, he’s going to do something foolish; coming home that first night to find Nureyev on his couch, wrapped in the old ratty blanket he’d owned for years, wearing one of his shirts and curled like a child, he’d come way too close to… who knows. Idiocy of some kind. Sleeping in that same blanket, still warm from Peter’s body, had been agonizing. Also, he’s not really up for being judged any more than he already has been. So he resigns himself to spending a lot of money in bars for the next few days and goes to work.

He has a drink in the morning to take the edge off the hangover, and then he goes to the office. He’s been bluntly ignoring Rita’s questions about why he looks so worn down; she seems to think he’s getting sick, and he’s perfectly happy for her to believe that. He catches a case two days after Nureyev arrives, so he has that to occupy the daylight hours, and then he goes home… for a little while. Mostly to make sure Nureyev hasn’t died, or run out of food, or gone snooping through all of Juno’s private possessions. The latter is probably happening anyway, but Juno’s determined to ignore it as long as possible. Since Nureyev hasn’t said anything yet, Juno’s going to pretend for his own sake that there’s no way that Nureyev has found any of the more personal items hidden at the bottoms of drawers or among piles of forgotten things or at the back of Juno’s closet, tucked away so that he doesn’t have to look at the reminders of his mistakes that he can’t bring himself to throw out.

Then he leaves again, before they can fight. The argument on the second evening had been… pretty awful. Of _course_ Juno knows that his apartment is a shithole. Of course he knows that his _life_ is a shithole. But it had hurt to have Nureyev point it out so bluntly, to remind Juno of all of the signs of his unworthiness. Some of the things he’d said, the reminders that Nureyev had cared for him once… those had made it all worse. _I thought you had more self-respect_. _You made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome in your life_.

“Yeah,” Juno mutters. “Well, I don’t. And you don’t want to be, clearly, so shut up.”

“What was that?” Aya—bartender, owner, listening ear extraordinaire—sidles over, grabbing for the bottle of whiskey to refill Juno’s glass. “Rough night, Detective Steel?”

“You could say that,” Juno says.

“You’re sure _looking_ rough. Anything I can do?”

Juno shrugs. “Just keep pouring.”

She gives him a long, steady look. Then she says, “Call if you need anything,” and leaves him alone to stew.

He feels a lot of gratitude toward Aya, really. She’s one of the better bartenders in the city: runs her own place and keeps it tidy, doesn’t take any shit, knows how to throw a punch when she needs to. She’s broken up a few fights when old enemies have walked through her doors and spotted Juno sitting at her bar, and doesn’t let him apologize too much (though she’ll always take the tips he leaves to help cover the cost of broken glasses and spilled liquor). She doesn’t ask questions, either.

He’s not even sure what he’d say if someone asked. If someone sat him down and said to him—

“Penny for your thoughts, dollface?”

Juno glances over to his right to see that a stranger has come to lean against the bar next to him. The guy is tall, not bad looking in a classic, clean-cut sort of way, wearing a blazer over an unwrinkled white shirt with a few buttons undone at his throat. Juno lets his gaze linger there for a minute, and then looks up to meet smugly amused brown eyes.

“They’re worth a bit more than that,” Juno replies, shifting to face the guy slightly. “Care to make a better offer?”

“Another drink, then.” He sits down, turned so that his knee bumps against Juno’s. “What’s a dame like you doing drinking alone on a night like this?”

Juno waits until the guy has flagged Aya and ordered a drink for him, and then he says, “Just passing the time.”

“Care for some company?”

“Forward, aren’t you?” Juno asks, and tosses back half the drink.

The guy laughs. “The name’s Jamison, actually. And sure, call it forward if you like, if forward’s going to get me places.”

Juno considers him. He _is_ handsome, with large hands and a glint in his eye that says he wants to make a mess out of Juno. Juno’s already a mess on the inside; might as well be one on the outside, too. So he tosses back the drink and says, “Sure. Show me what you’re made of, I guess.”

Jamison chuckles, leans in to trail a finger across Juno’s cheek and then down his throat. The touch makes him shudder. “Come on, sweetheart. I’ll show you a good time.”

He throws money down on the bar, and Juno does the same, paying his tab for the night. He’s not as drunk as he’s gotten the last few nights, but he’s got a good buzz going on, and he’s hoping that he’ll be adding an endorphin high to it pretty soon.

Jamison leads him out into Hyperion’s grime-dark night and hails a cab, then gives an address on the better side of town. Clearly he’s got some money; Juno decides not to speculate about what he was doing trawling for a lay in a lower-end bar when he could afford one of Hyperion’s glitzy nightclubs or fancy pubs. Instead he forces himself to stay relaxed when Jamison lays a hand on his thigh in the back of the cab, to pretend that the hitch in his breathing when Jamison leans over to whisper dark promises into his ear is arousal and not anxiety. He wants this; it’ll be fine. He’s going to fall into this guy’s bed and forget all about the man sleeping in his own for a while.

Jamison’s apartment is on the 38th floor of a gleaming apartment building, and its front door is black and slides silently open when he keys in a code and scans his thumbprint. Inside, Juno gets a glimpse of leather furnishings and modern minimalist art hanging on the walls, and then he’s being shoved back against the door and kissed, hard. Jamison’s mouth tastes like mint; he wasn’t drinking at the bar. Juno tries to turn off his brain and just enjoy it.

Hands on his waist, under his coat. He shivers and arches, places his own hands on Jamison’s shoulders, and pushes him back, breaking the kiss.

“Bedroom?” Juno asks, a little breathless.

“Now who’s forward?” Jamison murmurs. “Boots off, doll.”

Juno obeys and hangs his coat on a hook next to the door too, then lets himself be led deeper into the apartment, to Jamison’s bedroom. His bed is massive and covered in black sheets with a satin shine, and again before Juno can register the rest of the room he finds himself being manhandled. Jamison grabs him around the waist and spins him, bends to kiss him again. Juno opens his mouth beneath the force of Jamison’s lips and moans when his bottom lip is bitten, hard enough almost to bleed. One of Jamison’s hands trails down to grab at his ass, pulling him up against Jamison’s body. Juno gasps, grabs again for Jamison’s shoulders. He feels unsteady, and leans into the hands clutching him to try to regain some stability.

It doesn’t work. A moment later, he’s shoved, pushed onto the bed. The sheets are as silky as they’d looked, and Juno sprawls, then braces himself as Jamison’s weight comes down on him, pressing him into the mattress. It’s smothering and intense, and Juno quakes beneath his partner, grabs at his shirt and his hair as Jamison bends his head to bite at Juno’s neck.

“You’re so responsive,” Jamison says into Juno’s skin when Juno moans at the touch of teeth. “Like a little pain, baby?”

“Yeah—yeah. Go for it. Whatever you want,” Juno says, and hates how his voice trembles.

Jamison chuckles. “That’s a dangerous thing to say to a man like me.”

“I’ve probably had worse,” Juno says. His tone is darker than he means it to be, and he clears his throat. “I mean—god. Just come here and fuck me.”

“Alright, alright,” Jamison says. “Clothes off.”

He gets up off the bed to strip off his own clothing, and Juno wriggles out of his, tossing his shirt and his pants to the floor. He leaves his underwear for now, because he feels shivery and cold and he doesn’t want Jamison to realize just yet that he isn’t hard.

Jamison comes back to the bed then, naked. He’s a good-looking guy, muscular in all the right ways with a long cock that’s already more than half-hard, flushed with blood. It’s large, and Juno thinks longingly of the oblivion that’ll come once that’s inside him, driving all the thoughts out of his head. He’s still thinking of that when Jamison presses him down once more into the sheets and straddles him.

“What do you want, dollface?” Jamison asks. “You want my cock tonight? Gonna take it like the good girl you are?”

“Yes,” Juno says. “Please.”

“Good. Roll over.”

Juno does so once Jamison gets up off him, and rises to his knees in response to the hands tugging at his hips. Jamison reaches forward to dig around under the pillow, and comes back with a bottle of lube, which he drops beside Juno’s knees on the bed. Then, without warning, he slaps Juno’s ass.

Juno jerks, a noise tearing out of his throat. Then he lets himself fall to his elbows and says into the crook of his arms, “Hit me again.”

Jamison laughs and does it, spanks his ass a few times. It stings, the pain heating up Juno’s body, and Juno shivers and shifts back and forth, not sure if he wants more or wants to get away. Every touch feels too-close and jagged, the filtered air of the apartment cold and remote on his skin, and he just wants to stop _thinking_ , not whatever’s happening right now.

And then Jamison says, “You like that, angel? Look at you, such a slut for it.” And he reaches forward to touch Juno’s cock, and Juno doesn’t have time to jerk away.

It’s impossible that Jamison wouldn’t notice that Juno still isn’t _fucking_ hard, his body not responding like it usually does to the stimulus of pain. In fact, he definitely _does_ notice, and goes still, his hand cupping Juno’s cock and balls, the former soft in his palm. There’s a long moment, and then Juno says, “Never mind. Just—fuck, never mind.”

He scrambles up off the bed. He doesn’t dare look at Jamison as he pulls his briefs back up and looks around in the darkness for his own clothing on the floor.

“Hey,” Jamison says from the bed, sounding concerned and a little confused. “Look, doll, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about if you warm up a bit slow—we can try something else if you want. Or—”

“It’s not that,” Juno says. He finds his pants and shoves his legs into them, ungainly and vulnerable. “Sorry. This was a mistake.”

Jamison makes a dismayed noise. “If I did something—”

“It’s not you.” _Finally_ Juno finds his shirt, tugs it back on. He just wants to go _home \_.

He makes it out of the apartment, boots and coat and all, before he remembers that going home means facing the fact that Nureyev is sleeping in his bed and probably dreaming of never hearing the name _Juno Steel_ ever again.

So he decides to go get another drink instead.

* * *

Juno arrives at the office the following morning still drunk. Not _very_ drunk, but he’s definitely got a buzz, which he’s pretty happy with—until Rita jumps up from her desk when she sees him and cries, “Mistah Steel!”

He gives her a rough salute and says, “G’morning, Rita,” then turns to stumble toward the coffee pot. He’s sure she can tell that he’s been out all night; he’s wearing the city streets on his shoulders, the smell of liquor and misery hanging around him like a shroud. The knees of his pants are damp where he’d tripped on a curb and fallen into a puddle at some point, and even without having looking into a mirror he knows there are dark bags under his eyes. It’s not like Rita doesn’t know what a bender looks like on him, and even if she didn’t, it’s got to be obvious.

Rita follows him as he crosses the office and pours himself a mug. It’s too hot, as usual; their coffee pot is a bit glitchy and tends to overheat the coffee, which is great on the days that Juno puts the mug down and forgets he has it for a while, because by then it’s a decent temperature, but is really unfortunate on the days that he absentmindedly picks up his mug to take a sip only a few minutes after pouring and ends up burning his mouth.

“You look terrible, boss,” Rita is saying as Juno pours and then carries his mug into his office. “Really terrible, like you’ve been up all night and haven’t slept or gone home or nothing! Did you get lost? Did someone kidnap you and you had to escape and walk all the way back here from all the way across the city? Did you—?”

“Nothing happened,” Juno says. He sits down behind the desk and stares at the pile of receipts and invoices and whatnot that’s sitting there, waiting for him to file it all away properly so that he can find it again when tax season rolls around. He can do that drunk, he decides.

Rita’s still talking; Juno tunes in to hear her saying, “—can tell me anything, boss! If someone’s after you or you got attacked at your apartment, or if you’ve got a case that you didn’t tell me about, or anything! I don’t—”

Juno tunes her back out again and picks up his coffee mug contemplatively. He stares down at it, wonders if he’s strong enough to break it in his hand and pour scalding coffee across his own skin, or better yet, that _and_ have the ceramic shards slice open his palm. Probably not, he decides. “Strong” isn’t exactly among his primary character traits. He puts the mug back down.

“Mistah Steel!” Rita shouts, piercing enough that Juno looks up at her again.

“What’d you need, Rita?” he asks.

“Mistah Steel, are you _drunk_?” she asks, sounding scandalized.

“Yeah,” Juno says. “I mean, uh. No, definitely not. Look, Rita, why don’t you go back to… whatever you were doing. I’ve gotta—” he gestures vaguely at the paperwork. “Let me know if anyone calls with a case. Or don’t. Whatever.”

“You haven’t showed up to work drunk in _ages_ ,” Rita says, instead of going back to her desk and leaving him in peace. “Something _definitely_ happened.”

“Nope,” Juno says. There’s a bottle of moonshine in his desk drawer, now that he thinks about it. That’s all he’s thinking about. Absolutely not anything that might have happened.

Rita puts her hands on her hips, which is a bad sign. “You gotta have your wits about you to do your job, Mistah Steel,” she says. “And to have that you gotta sober up! I’m gonna drive you home, boss, so that you can sleep.”

“You’re not even a little in charge of me,” Juno says. He’s trying really hard not to sound like he’s slurring, because that’ll only get Rita more fired up. He just wants her to go away, leave him alone to have another drink and get some work done and not _think about it_. “Go back to your streams, Rita.”

“No! I’m not gonna. You’re coming with me.”

She comes around the desk and grabs onto his arm and starts trying to haul him out of his seat. It’s not very effective, but it _is_ annoying.

“Rita!” Juno barks, after a few seconds of fruitlessly playing tug-of-war with his own limb. The sharp tone catches her by surprise, and she stops. “ _Go back to your god damned streams and leave me the hell alone_.”

Rita recoils a little. Juno regrets having said it immediately, just like he regrets most things right about now, but he can’t take it back. So he watches her draw herself up and listens to her say, “Well, sorry for trying to care about you, boss,” and he flinches when she slams the office door as she storms out.

At least she’s gone, he thinks, and reaches for the bottom drawer of his desk where the liquor is hidden.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains another Risa (aka Specialtater) art! I love her! It's fucking beautiful!
> 
> This chapter also contains RITA!
> 
> And after this, there's only one more chapter to go....

Peter doesn’t see much of Juno as he passes through the first stage of recovery. He still wakes up when Juno stumbles home drunk well past midnight, but now that Peter is sleeping in the bedroom, they don’t interact. In the earlier evenings every other day, Juno delivers groceries and asks Peter what else he might need. (Eyeliner, because he just doesn’t feel himself without it and he’s very tired of not feeling himself. Then he has to bite his tongue until it bleeds to prevent himself from adding, “Soap and shampoo, because wearing your scent when you won’t even look me in the eye is killing me.” Still, stopping himself from saying it is a small victory.) Then, once Juno has the shopping list and seems reassured that Peter hasn’t died during the day, he goes out again.

After a few days of this, Peter begins to feel recovered enough that he starts thinking about leaving. Then, one night, Juno doesn’t come home at all. Peter wakes up around midnight out of growing bodily habit, and then lies awake for hours waiting for Juno to return, his worry mounting with every passing silent minute. That decides him: he’s not going to leave just yet. He still cares deeply and desperately about Juno Steel, and if this is how Juno lives when Peter isn’t around… he needs to know. He has questions about Juno’s life that are sticking in his mind; most importantly, _why._

This is not what he had expected to find upon his return to Mars, when he’d allowed himself to imagine it. Juno out drinking every night, stumbling home in the small hours; the spoiled food in his fridge despite the spice cupboard being filled with the half-used evidence of someone who knows perfectly well how to cook; the piles of laundry. It’s the horrifying picture of someone whose life has crumbled silently to pieces, who’s carrying on in the aftermath at the remnants out of habit more than desire. He’d known that Juno was not a comfortable resident of his own head, but he hadn’t thought it would look like _this_. He knows that Juno is capable of living better, had seen evidence of it a year ago. Shouldn’t Juno have picked up the pieces after their wild affair, even after the loss of his eye, and gone back to his life by now?

The curiosity will rankle if Peter leaves Mars without getting some answers. The questions he has will stick like burrs under his skin, just as the _why_ from a year ago has stuck all this time, and frankly he’s ready to be done. He’d had every intention of keeping his promise never to darken Juno’s door again. But since he’s here, he’s going to take advantage, and one way or another he’s going to answer the question of Juno Steel: either by getting him back, or by getting him out from under his skin forever.

It takes another few days for Peter’s fine motor control returns enough that he’ll be able to return things to exactly the place he found them. By then, a week after he arrived in Juno’s apartment, he’s almost entirely recovered, to be honest, though he’s still tired from the effort of recovery. But he has the energy to begin snooping properly, and so that he does: he dedicates two days to it, in fact. He opens drawers and pulls books off shelves, examines knick-knacks and pulls out receipts being used as bookmarks. Every stone he can find to overturn he overturns, and then is turned back and replaced neatly so that Juno will never know that Peter has dug into every aspect of his life as thoroughly as possible unless Peter tells him, which now that he has control over his mouth again he has no intention of doing. He feels like an archeologist, trying to discover through only the material remnants the way of life for a person long dead—artifacts to be examined in context, their details admired and catalogued. But Juno Steel is very much alive.

What he finds is very interesting indeed. The evidence points to the same conclusions he’s already come to, for the most part: Juno is a lady who once lived a richer, fuller life and has given up on many aspects of it. There are many recent receipts for takeout, none dated closer together than two days; he’s surviving, subsisting, but not living—and yet Peter remembers the spices that he found in Juno’s cupboard. There’s cheap instant coffee there too, near the front, and further back a few small jars of nice loose-leaf tea, and a tin of proper cocoa. The books on his shelf range in subject, but their number and variety point to someone who once loved to curl up on his couch with a cup of tea and novel and immerse himself in another world… but though there are a few books piled on Juno’s bedside table and on the table beside the couch, there’s dust atop the piles, and no bookmarks further than halfway through. Peter can see in his mind Juno picking up a new book, hoping that capture that joy that he’d once had in reading, and putting it down again in indifference or frustration before he could finish, and then never picking it up again.

Juno’s apartment contains other things, too, less useful things—a snow globe, a golf ball, a carved wooden box with nothing in it. A statue of a ballerina. A kaleidoscope jar, seemingly hand-made. Strange things, not the sort of thing that Peter would imagine Juno keeping—except he realizes that perhaps these are keepsakes given to Juno by grateful clients. They’re displayed, in some cases, like trophies: reminders of good work, like a folded paper crane set lovingly on a shelf in the living room, and stuck to the fridge with a magnet a child’s drawing of Juno in a cape, standing on a pile of defeated bad guys with swirls for eyes. Others have been hidden away, as if Juno would rather forget entirely; in the bedside table’s drawer Peter finds, among other things, a small, empty glass vial closed with a cork, and he touches it gently, wondering what it might once have contained, if anything. Peter finds a stuffed toy, a battered and beloved rabbit, and holds it in his hands for a long time, sitting on the edge of Juno’s bed, and strokes its soft ears. He wishes he knew the story. He wishes he had the freedom to ask Juno where this toy had come from, what had happened to the child it belonged to. But he doesn’t have that right, so he puts it back where he found it and continues snooping.

Buried in the back of Juno’s closet are things of particular interest. On the top shelf, shoved far to the corner and hidden beneath a pile of hats, there’s a keepsake box. A _real_ keepsake box, not one for the sort of random tchotchkes scattered around the apartment, but for things that Juno cared enough about to keep hidden. This Peter extracted from its hiding place with special care and took it out to the couch to look at it in the daylight, knowing that while Juno shouldn’t be home for some hours, if he did return early he would be caught instantly. For all that he usually takes ever possible measure to prevent being caught red-handed, he almost hopes that Juno will walk through the door even as he lifts the lid of the box to look inside. He knows that now more than ever before he’s committing a terrible violation of Juno’s privacy, but he can’t—won’t—stop now.

The box is mostly empty. Within are some personal documents, including Juno’s birth certificate ( _Mother: Sarah Steel, Father: None;_ born and raised in Hyperion City) and a passport which Peter had honestly suspected Juno didn’t have. Beneath the documents are about a half dozen photos. One of a group of teenagers, clearly a young Juno, a boy with a massive afro and an unbelievably wide, genuine smile, and a young Sasha Wire, who Peter hadn’t met but had looked into for the purpose of the role of Rex Glass. He hadn’t realized that they knew each other, but he supposes it makes sense—Juno had mentioned her once during the Grimpotheusis debacle with some familiarity. They must have been childhood friends.

Another photo is Sasha again, with her arm around a younger girl, both smiling. Another of the third boy from the photo by himself, clearly not paying attention to the camera. And a photo of what he thinks is Juno in motion, dancing; he’d never known that Juno could dance, but he looks graceful and strong in the photo. Then he flips to the next and stops, because it’s Juno in the same dancing clothes… and Juno in a t-shirt and torn jeans, standing side-by-side with their arms around one another. So, not Juno dancing in the previous photo at all: his twin brother. He’d known Juno had had a brother who had died, but this was quite a different sort of knowing: to see two identical faces smiling out at him, one with Juno’s familiar wry smile, the other a shining grin. They’re young, not older than sixteen or seventeen and possibly younger, and they look so full of life and happiness… he can’t imagine the Juno in the photo living the way that Juno lives now. It’s crushing to try to imagine the events that turned this bright child who tucks himself into his brother’s side into the hard-edged, withdrawn, bitterly sad person that Peter now knows.

There are a few more photos of Juno and his brother. Benzaiten Steel, Peter remembers; he’d done a little more research into Juno after their first meeting, though he hadn’t dug too far below the surface, careful of Juno’s privacy then in a way that he cannot let himself care to be now. There’d been plenty on the surface to find, anyway; for all that some parts of Juno’s life were shadowed, others made significant ripples in Hyperion’s media. What he hadn’t known then, couldn’t have gleaned from the bland obituary or wildly speculative articles about the insanity of Sarah Steel, is what he sees now: that Juno Steel had loved his brother. That despite that love, he keeps these few photos only and had none that had been taken inside of their home by their own mother, and even these few he keeps tucked far away in a box with hinges that squeaked.

He’d also read about the scandal that had ended in Juno’s dismissal from the HCPD during his research stint, and mourns again for a different facet of Juno’s light and innocence when he finds buried at the bottom of the pile of photos a portrait of Juno, young and proud, in an HCPD trainee’s uniform. Each thing that Peter sees in this stack of photos, friends and family and career, is just another thing that has vanished from Juno’s life, one way or another.

At the very bottom of the box, there’s an envelope. On the front is written only _Diamond_ in Juno’s handwriting, and Peter finds himself grateful that he lifted it carefully, for it’s unsealed and filled with nothing but loose ash. Peter stares into the envelope for a moment, keeping his fingers well clear of the black remnant of some further unknown tragedy, and then reassembles the box just as it had been and returns it to the closet. Deep in the closet, before unearthing the box, he’d found a wedding dress wrapped in a garment bag, sealed away from moths and dust, so deeply hidden behind coats and skirts and other clothes that Peter suspects that Juno has taken close care not to lay eyes on it in years, never mind hands. If that dress and this envelope share an unspoken secret, Peter’s not sure he wants to know it.

There are things he can’t know just from snooping around, however: the details of Juno’s past, the way that his behaviour now compares to his usual habits. Is Peter’s own presence a factor in Juno’s decision to be absent from his home, to be drunk so constantly? The half-empty bottles of whiskey and moonshine hidden in the back of a cupboard can’t speak to tell him if Juno has been taking comfort in them this habitually for all of the past year, or if it’s only recently that this pattern has taken shape. Only Juno can tell him that, or… or the others in Juno’s life, perhaps.

Agent Rex Glass had met Juno’s secretary, Rita. She was a vivacious spirit and perhaps a little clueless, but not unintelligent, and it was clear even from their brief interactions that she cared a great deal for her employer, and he for her. Juno has other friends, Peter knows that, but none who spend so much time with him as Rita, nor in such close quarters. If anyone is to know anything about Juno Steel, it’s Rita.

* * *

The next day he borrows some of Juno’s clothing to assemble a disguise, digs some creds out of the pockets of his own coat, and slips out of the apartment, wandering the streets until he finds a slightly dingy kiosk selling burner comms and buys one. It’s the work of a moment to sort through his mental library of things he’s memorized for jobs—his memory is not eidetic, but it _is_ practiced—to find the number for Juno’s office, and then he calls, clearing his throat as it rings to prepare to disguise his voice if Juno happens to answer himself.

Fortunately for him, the comm is answered by the perky voice of Rita, who says, “Mistah Detective Steel’s Office this is Rita speaking! How can I or Mistah Steel help you today? Has someone been kidnapped? Ooh, is there a _bomb_?”

“No bomb,” Peter says with a chuckle. “Miss Rita, I…” He pauses, realizes that for once he’s begun a conversation without a plan. Without any idea of what to say to her to convince her to tell him what he wants to know. She’s Juno’s friend, his ally, and is unlikely to spill any details about his life and his welfare to a stranger. There are ruses he could use to get the information in a roundabout way, but… all of a sudden, sitting on Juno’s couch in his empty apartment, surrounded by the tatters of a mostly-empty life, Peter is _tired_. A few days of honesty have reminded him—or perhaps shown him for the first time—how exhausting it is to lie so very constantly and utterly.

“What is it?” Rita asks on the other end of the line. “Is something wrong, Mistah Mysterious Caller?”

“I… I’m sorry. My—you know me as Rex Glass,” Peter says, before he can hesitate further. “I became… acquainted with your employer a year and a half ago, and—”

“Agent Glass!” Rita interrupts. “I remember you—you were so suave and mysterious and dashing and handsome, and then you vanished into the night and left Mistah Steel all flustered!”

“I did?” Peter asks, and then shakes his head, because that _really_ doesn’t matter right now. “That’s not what I’m calling about. It’s more to do with what happened later.”

“Later? Are you talking about some of the weird stuff that happened last year because Mistah Steel has never really told me _anything_ about what happened, he just up and vanished all of a sudden for weeks and I was _really_ worried about him! I thought he got kidnapped or killed or something and I called all around to his friends and I even hacked into Dark Matters to see if Agent Wire knew anything but she didn’t and I looked _you_ up too, Agent Glass, but you were _impossible_ to get in touch with!”

Rita talks about five miles a minute, and Peter finds himself glad that he’s mostly recovered—even three days ago he would have been hard pressed to follow her. He lets her wind down a little before he cuts in to say, “That’s because Rex Glass isn’t real. My name… I can’t tell you what it is exactly, not just yet, but please believe me when I say that I’m someone who cares about Juno. I’d like to know anything you can tell me about what’s happened to him in the past year.”

“Well I’m not really sure I should be telling you anything about that,” Rita says.

Peter sighs. “Is Juno there right now?”

“I don’t know _where_ he is!” Rita cries, sounding frustrated. “I haven’t known where he’s been in _ages_ , I see him once a day and he’s a _mess_ , and—I’m still not sure I should be telling you any of this, Mistah Not Agent Rex Glass.”

“I’ve been staying in Juno’s apartment for most of the last week,” Peter says. “I’ve noticed that something is… wrong, and I’d like to know how far it extends. I just want to help him—I care about Juno a great deal, you see. Much to my chagrin at the moment, as he seems very unwilling to be helped.”

“You got that right,” Rita declares.

“The truth is,” Peter says, “I have been away from Mars for some time—a year—and I will need to be going again soon. I had hoped, when I left before, that I was leaving Juno to a better life. Or, a life better without me in it. It was… disturbing to find that in fact his life is far from happy. That _he_ is far from happy. I believe he deserves better, and I want your help.”

“It’s been a long time since Mistah Steel was happy,” Rita says, subdued. “Since he vanished a year ago and came back without his eye, at least.”

Peter closes his own eyes upon hearing that. “I see,” he says heavily. “That, I fear, might be in part my fault. I was with him during his disappearance, when he lost his eye, and… it was hard. And he indicated that he did not want me around in the aftermath, so I assumed he would be fine.”

“He ain’t.”

“No, I can see that.” Peter pauses, hesitates, swallows. Then he says, “Has he always turned to drinking so heavily?”

“Mostly,” Rita says, her tone a little hushed. “Mistah Steel has gotten a lot better, way better than he was when we first started working together, because he was in really really bad shape back then and it took him a long time to get any better at all. Drinking’s as close as he lets himself get to his old habits, I always thought, because it’s something he’s always done and thought was pretty harmless but he does drink an _awful_ lot when he’s down like this and he showed up the other day to work still drunk, like he’d been out all night, and he hasn’t done that again this week but he’s been real hungover most of the time and he’s carrying a flask again I think, and I just don’t know what to say to ask him if he’s okay without making him really mad!”

“Is this normal?” Peter asks, probing.

“Yes and no! I mean, he gets down sometimes and he usually drinks more when he is, and he gets in a lot more fights and just doesn’t take very good care of himself, y’know? But this is really bad. And I don’t think he’s sleeping much. You said you’re staying with him, right? Has he been sleeping?”

“I would say that calling it staying _with_ him would be a stretch,” Peter admits. “He hasn’t been home much this week, you see. Avoiding me, I think.”

“You two must have a lotta history,” Rita says. “Mistah Steel likes to solve most of his problems with punching, nowadays, instead of just pretending they don’t exist. He’s grumpy like that. What _did_ happen with you, anyway? Mistah Steel doesn’t ever tell me anything _ever_ it seems like and since you two… broke up? Were you dating my boss, Mistah Not Agent? Did you have a dramatic break up? You must have had a big fancy love affair and almost run away together and then at the last minute he said something like _I can’t do this Mistah Not Agent Rex Glass_ all with tears in his eyes—or his eye, maybe, by then?—and then you vanished into the night like a shadow because your heart was broken and so was his but you didn’t know that, and it was all really tragic! But now you’re back and you just can’t _bear_ to see him suffer anymore, just like the hero on one of the romance holos, and you’re gonna sweep him off his feet and make his life better and you’ll ride into the sunset on a white horse and live happily ever after!”

She’s closer than Peter would like to admit, both to what happened and what he would _like_ to have happen, so he forces himself to chuckle. “You have an active imagination, Miss Rita. It… regardless of the details, yes, we had something of an affair and then we parted ways, and if possible I _would_ like to see Juno’s life improving, if not improved, by the time I must leave Mars again.”

“That’s really romantic Mistah Not Agent!” Rita cries, loud enough that Peter has to pull the comms away from his ear slightly. “Well listen, I’ll help you out as much as I can but Mistah Steel doesn’t really listen to me very well not even when I’m trying to take care of him, or maybe especially then, so you and I are going to have to come up with a plan! A secret agent plan, like in Lost Stars when Ronnie and Len had to kidnap the Countess Varnholder because her _life_ was in _danger_ but she didn’t believe them when they warned her and refused to leave her fortress, and they were like, no Countess, the vampire hunters are after you! But she wouldn’t go so they proved to her that her security wasn’t as good as she thought by breaking in themselves and spiriting her away in the middle of the night and keeping her safe so that when the hunters invaded she just plain wasn’t there!

“And, ooh, Mistah Not Agent, maybe that’s an idea—I can _kidnap_ Mistah Steel except not really, I’ll just be picking him up from work but with more determination than usual and driving him home, and then I can make him go inside and I’ll lock the door with my comms because, y’know, I’m a pretty good hacker when I try, and then you two will have a long and tearful conversation and you’ll make up and Mistah Steel will feel much better! Also I hope you’ll tell him that I’m really worried about him.”

Peter had not actually _heard_ her take a breath during that speech but knows she must have. Either way: it’s not… a terrible plan. Peter’s going to have to talk to Juno eventually, and without actually tying him up (not a good idea, for _numerous_ reasons) he has no real way to keep him in one place for long enough to have that conversation without Rita’s help.

“You’re welcome to stay and talk to him as well,” Peter says. “He is your boss, and your friend—if you want a part in the conversation—”  
“No, no,” Rita says. “If anything I could say to Mistah Steel would have stopped him from being sad and drunk all the time, it’d have happened by now. I talk to him a _lot_ and he is one stubborn lady, lemme tell you. And anyway I think his current sadness and drunkness is mostly to do with you—wait that sounded awful! I mean, he’s just not dealing very will with, y’know, the past. He doesn’t really, ever. About anything, so it’s not just you I promise, he’s just very not good at feelings! Which is okay except when he decides that the best way to be not good at feelings is to do things that hurt him. So maybe you two can talk it out a bit together and come up with some way for him to stop being so sad. I believe in you, Mistah Not Agent—a year ago when you two were together, Mistah Steel… he wasn’t really happier and if he was I’m not sure I’d know about it, because I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Mistah Steel really actually _happy_ , but he had something to focus on for a few months and that’s always better, and then when you left he was definitely _more_ sad and angry and stuff than he usually is and that’s no good at all! He probably missed you lots. And if you care about him as much as you say then having you to focus on and not miss any more is a good thing, or at least I think so.”

“I hope you’re right,” Peter says. “Listen, Miss Rita—you have my number now. If Juno comes into the office today and you’re able to to get him on his way here in your company, send me a text message if you can manage it without tipping him off. I’ll get myself ready once I receive that message.”

“Oh, sure thing,” Rita says cheerfully. “Mistah Steel doesn’t know the first thing about technology so it’ll be easy enough—just gotta tell him I’m texting Frannie or something!”

“Good,” Peter confirms. It’s been a while since he planned a heist with someone else. Even if in this case they’re stealing a person. To stash him in his own house. Same principle, anyway. “I’ll be ready.”

“What if he doesn’t come into the office today?”

“It’s fine,” Peter says. He can bide his time. “I can wait. Just as soon as you can is fine.”

“Alrighty!” Rita says. “This is so _exciting_ , Mistah Not Agent. We’re conspiring! On a Plan!”

He can hear the capital P in the way she says it, and chuckles. “Indeed,” he says. “And you are a very good co-conspirator, Miss Rita. But for now I think I had best bid you adieu—you never know when Juno might decide to appear.”

“That’s right!” Rita says. “I’ll keep an eye out for him, don’t you worry Mistah Not Agent, and I’ll bully him right into my car and drive him home and I’ll text you! And the Plan will work! Until then!”

“Until then.” Peter hangs up and swiftly hides the comms, and then sits heavily back down on the couch. So: he has a plan. A Plan, to put it in Rita’s words. She’ll bring Juno and lock them in together, and so long as Juno doesn’t try to climb out the window again, Peter will have the opportunity to interrogate Juno about… about what happened. What _is_ happening, why he’s crumbling to pieces like this—why his _life_ has crumbled to pieces. Did he really miss Peter, as Rita said? Is it true that this drinking is a response solely to Peter’s appearance, some sort of broken coping mechanism for the stress? And if so, _why_? Juno had _left_. _He_ had been the one to walk away. And now he was the one suffering, only half-functioning, and there was no way that that was because of Peter, or more specifically Peter’s absence… was it?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST CHAPTER OH MY GOD IT'S DONE I'M FREE.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed! I don't even... have words, honestly.
> 
> ETA: NOW FEAT. THE FINAL RISA ART!!!

Juno’s working an _immensely_ stupid adultery case—more stupid than is typical—and on the second day of staking out some some moron’s spouse’s office he doesn’t even bother to go back to the office in the evening to drop off his camera’s datachip for Rita to upload. He just goes straight to a bar. No point going to the office and no _desire_ to go home has been the mood of the week, and while his wallet probably isn’t very happy about it, he… well, he’s not happy. But at least most of the time he’s not feeling much else at all.

As he has every night this week, he drinks until the bartender kicks him out and then stumbles a ways through the streets, enough to sober up a bit in the cool air, and then pops into the first dive he sees for another round. This bartender is a bit more savvy than the last and only lets him get a few drinks in him before she cuts him off, and though it’s still early, relatively speaking, he decides to cut his losses and heads home. It’s close to midnight and he could probably find a nightclub if he was willing to spend the money for just a little more liquor, but he decides, no.

On his way home he stumbles past an alley and startles when from the shadows someone says, “Hey, buddy. Yeah, you. You lookin’ for a good time?”

Juno glances over and sees a skinny man in a long coat, lurking in the alley. He doesn’t really look like a sex worker, but it takes all kinds. “You’re not really my type,” Juno says, a bit hazy.

“Not what I meant,” the guy says, and reaches into his pocket. For a moment Juno thinks he’s going to get shot, thinks, _oh well,_ and then instead of a blaster the guy pulls out a baggie that contains two bright pink tablets.

“Oh,” Juno says.

“Yeah,” the guys says, snickering. “It’s good shit, nice and clean. 30 creds for a hit.”

Juno swallows, staring. It’s been… a long time, and he was a different person then. But he thinks about it for a long time, long enough that the guy sighs and says, “You gonna fuckin’ buy it or not? If not, get lost before the cops show up.”

“They’re more likely to buy your shit than I am,” Juno says before thinking much about it, and to his relief, finds that it’s something like true. He’s not _that_ desperate. Not yet, though who knows how he’s gonna be if Nureyev sticks around for another interminable week.

“Fine,” the guy says, and shoves the drugs back in his pocket. “Whatever, lady.”

The guy slinks back into the shadows of his alleyway to ambush some other drunk passerby and Juno stumbles onward, still thinking about those pink tablets. It would have been _so_ easy. He’s definitely got 30 creds on him. Then he’d have been laughing, probably literally. But God knew what he’d have done if he’d gotten high—for one, his tolerance is probably gone, so two pills would’ve fucked him up pretty good. And then to go back to his place, where Peter Nureyev was sleeping in his bed, torment and temptation tied into one… He’d have done something _real_ stupid, that’s for sure.

He still wants it. Wants to go back and snag that little punk and buy the drugs and just _forget_. Not care, just for a little while. He _wants_ it.

But Juno has learned over the years that he only wants things that are bad. Bad for him, for the people he cares about… Just look at Rita. He doesn’t know how she’d known, when he left the HCPD, how sorry he was to leave her friendship behind, how much he wanted to keep her open warmth and loyal companionship, but she had and she’d given him what he wanted, and since then he’s done nothing but drag her down. She could be a rising star doing… computer stuff, whatever, but instead she’s trapped as the secretary for a deadbeat PI who shows up drunk to work and can barely shoot straight.

If he were less selfish, he’d make her leave. But he hasn’t been able to, not yet. Every day lately, he feels like he’s thought, _just one more day_.

Tomorrow never comes, huh.

Without realizing it, his feet have brought him to his door, and Juno fumbles for his key. It’s buried in a pocket and it takes a minute to fish it out, his fingers clumsy, but eventually he manages to get inside and he shucks his boots as quietly as he can, aware that the apartment is dark and quiet. Nureyev has gone to bed, still exhausted and recovering.

Juno hangs his coat and wanders into the kitchen to down a shot of whiskey straight from the mostly-empty bottle just for good measure. This at least doesn’t hurt anyone but himself. He’s allowed to want a drink, because it doesn’t matter if he pickles himself and drops dead of liver failure; he’s not an angry drunk, so he won’t hurt anyone else, and that’s all that matters. He stands in his kitchen holding the bottle loosely in one hand until he remembers to take another sip and nearly gags on the taste, figures that’s a sign that he’s probably had enough for the night, and puts it back in the cupboard. On the way back to the living room he passes the turn in the hallway that leads to the bedroom and automatically takes a step that way, and then forces himself to stop just outside the door, which has been left just slightly ajar.

Just like with the pills, it would be so damn easy to indulge this craving. To push open the door and crawl into bed with Nureyev, with _Peter_ , soak up his warmth, reveal exactly how gluttonous his hunger is for Peter’s presence and touch. He’s starving for it, cold down to his bones and so _lonely_.

That’s the real problem. Having Nureyev in his apartment, in his _life_ again has reminded him of exactly how alone he’s made himself and how alone he’s going to be again when Nureyev is gone. It’s his own fault, of course it is, he’s done this to himself and he _knows_ it was for a good reason, but that’s just… hard to remember right now, standing outside his own bedroom door and imagining that he can hear the soft sound of Peter’s shallow breathing, still tight with a pain and tiredness that Juno just wants to soothe.

But he can’t. He won’t. He struggles with himself in silence for a few more long minutes and then finally wins (or possibly loses) and continues on back into the living room. There’s a blanket folded neatly on the end of the couch and Juno takes off his socks then lies down in his clothes. He thinks it’s going to take him a long time to fall asleep, his gut churning with emotion and nausea, but he closes his eyes and blackness overtakes him immediately.

Mercifully, he doesn’t dream.

* * *

In the morning Juno sleeps late, late enough that Peter has to be awake, but when he checks the bedroom door is shut so he doesn’t try to hard to be stealthy about it when he goes to the kitchen to drink another shot of whiskey to take the edge off his hangover before he shuffles into the bathroom to shower and then put on deodorant and a hint of perfume, enough to disguise the fact that he’s been wearing these clothes for two days. He hadn’t been home yesterday afternoon to drop off groceries and lay out clothes for himself for the morning, so. Needs must.

Then he goes to work. He hands over the photo chip to Rita and she does whatever she does to put the photos on his computer, and he spends a few boring hours combing through them, comparing them to the photos he’s taken in the two days previous to yesterday, looking for the same people to appear. Finally he catches the same man in photos from three days ago and then again from yesterday, coming and going at an interval of about an hour both times, and he makes a note of the face—he’ll revisit the spouse’s office again tomorrow and see if the guy shows up a third time, because if so that’s probably the spouse’s… master? Well, maybe. It’s not like Juno can really judge what anyone else does in the bedroom.

Rita hovers a bit weirdly all throughout the afternoon, even refilling his coffee once which is something she’s always insisted is not her job, _you’re a grownup Mistah Steel, you can get it yourself!_ She asks him a few times if he’s feeling okay and he fends her off with vague grunts and “I’m fine.” It doesn’t entirely stop her from sticking her head in the door every fifteen minutes, but at least she stops _talking_ to him so that he can focus. He’s swapped to combing through the list of names of known (and possibly sexually intimate) associates the spouse’s husband had given him to see if any of them have photos of themselves publicly available, and if they do, if any match the photos he’s taken. So far, only those of coworkers, which makes sense—but it doesn’t eliminate them. He’s probably going to have to do some closer-quarters snooping, unless mystery man turns out to be on the list of names as well.

Finally Juno’s attention runs dry and he decides he might as well give it up for the day. It’s almost six o’clock and the only thing he’s eaten today was a cheese sandwich that appeared by his elbow at some point, probably by means of Rita, though how she’d managed to be stealthy enough to drop it off without his noticing. Then again, he had had his head down pretty hard on this stupid bullshit case for most of the day.

Honestly. The husband who’d hired him was _sure_ he was being cheated on because, typical story, his spouse had been ‘working late’ a lot. But who the hell knows. Sometimes people actually _have jobs_. And Juno’d seen the spouse—sure, face like that, they could probably get anyone they wanted, but it’s not like their husband wasn’t also good looking. High powered job, beautiful husband… maybe they were cheating, but Juno thinks they’d be an idiot to do it—they were living the dream. But, again, it’s not his job to judge. Just to catch the spouse in flagrante if necessary.

Juno hates these sorts of cases, but he’s been working a lot of them lately. He’s still working on getting his aim back, a slow and deeply frustrating task without the help of any fucking depth perception. At least he can hit the broad side of a barn now, but until he can be sure he’s not going to get killed because he can’t shoot the gun out of some goon’s hand, he’s avoided taking some of the more dangerous cases, which he prefers and, to boot, usually pay better. Damn it all.

He sits up and stretches, his arms over his head, and then pushes back his chair. At the scraping sound, Rita appears in the doorway to his office again, and says, “All done for the day, boss?”

“Yeah,” Juno says. He needs to get home—to check on Nureyev and then go find some damn dinner. And a drink. “Thanks, Rita.”

“Why don’t I drive you home, Mistah Steel? You’ve been working real hard today after all and I think you deserve a bit of a break!”

Juno gives her a narrow look. “I’m fine to walk, Rita, thanks.”

“I insist, boss!” She steps forward and latches her hands around his arm, starting to guide him toward the door. “You seem like you’ve been real tired and down lately and I wanna do something nice for you! Let me drive you home and, ooh, maybe we can stop and the store on the way and get you some ice cream and you can have a nice night in and relax, huh?”

Juno sighs. He’s still feeling faintly guilty about snapping at her a few days ago, and Rita in this sort of dogged mood is much easier to go along with. He’ll be able to keep her from coming into his apartment, he figures, so she won’t find out about Nureyev. And ice cream… does sound good. Even if he’s definitely not going to have a ‘nice’ night in to eat it. Maybe after he gets home from whichever bar he escapes to tonight, when Nureyev is sleeping. “Fine,” he says. “Store, then home, then you go home too, huh?”

“Sure thing boss!” Rita agrees, almost too easily, but Juno decides to take the victory that’s been handed to him.

On the way down to Rita’s car she pulls out her comms and fiddles with it for a minute, tilted in such a way that Juno can’t see the screen. Normally this would be pretty typical behaviour, but Juno notices that she’s gone a bit pink in the cheeks the way she does when she’s lying or hiding something, and so he says, “What’s up?”

“Oh!” Rita says, and prods the comms to turn off the screen. “Just texting Frannie, Mistah Steel.”

Juno narrows his eyes. “Oh yeah? What about?”

“Mistah Steel!” Rita says, sounding slightly affronted. She turns even more red. “Well, I—I mean, it’s none of your business!”

“No?”

“Not even a little bit! It’s about,” she says, and then hesitates. “Well, _you_ know.”

“I know?”

“Yeah!” Rita turns the comms back on and scrolls a little and then turns it to show him a text chain between her and Frannie and, wow, yeah, okay, that last text is _definitely_ not to do with him, never mind.

“Oh,” Juno says, resisting the urge to slap a hand over his eyes. _Not_ his business, nope. “Never mind.”

“Hmph!” Rita says. “That’s what I get for working for a private eye I guess, always getting up in my business and being so nosy!”

“Sorry, Rita.”

“Oh, it’s fine boss!” Immediately, she’s sunny again. How _does_ she do it, Juno wonders, and then shakes his head because they’ve reached Rita’s car and this is really not the time to wonder about the vagaries of how her mind works.

Rita drives over to the nearest grocery store and chatters at Juno while they both pick out a pint of ice cream, and then Rita insists on paying even though Juno pays _her_ , so realistically he’s paying anyway. Trying to argue this point with her gets him precisely nowhere, so he gives up and lets her chivvy him back to the car, the ice cream stashed in the back seat so as not to melt too quickly. The drive from the store to Juno’s apartment building is a short one, and Rita leans awkwardly into the back seat to retrieve Juno’s pint of ice cream and then insists on accompanying him to his door.

“You don’t get to come in,” Juno says firmly. “I am going to go inside, close the door, and be _alone_ for the rest of the evening. I am drawing a line.”

“That’s fine Mistah Steel,” Rita says. “Listen, you have yourself a nice bath and eat your ice cream and try to relax and feel a bit better, okay? Have a real nice evening, boss. Treat yourself!”

Well and good. Rita walks him to the door and he lets himself in, and then, as promised, closes the door behind himself. It shuts with a click—and then the lock beeps weirdly.

“Rita?” Juno calls through the door. “Did you just do something to my lock?”

“Sorry Mistah Steel!” Rita calls back. “It’s for your own good! Good luck with Mistah Not Agent!”

“Mistah— _fuck_. Rita! Get back here!” Juno shouts, and bangs on the door, but she doesn’t answer, and when he listens carefully he can hear the sound of her heels clicking away down the hall. “God _damn_ it.” Furious, Juno whirls away from the door and storms into the living room, where sure enough Nureyev is sitting on the couch, watching for him, not even pretending not to know what’s going on. “What the hell are you playing at, Nureyev?”

“We need to talk, Juno,” Nureyev says. “And you must forgive me for assuming that you wouldn’t stick around to do that if I gave you any choice.”

“You don’t get to hold me prisoner in my own apartment,” Juno says, with the addition of a firmly pointed finger. His other hand clenches tight around the pint of ice-cream, which is cold enough to numb his fingertips and damp, dripping once-frozen condensation over his knuckles and onto the floor.

“Are you really that desperate to avoid a conversation with me?” Nureyev asks, and his tone is so soft, so close to hurt, that it makes Juno recoil.

Juno shakes his head and says, “God damn it,” again, and then, “I have to… put this in the freezer, I guess.” He waves the pint of ice cream.

“Please come back,” Nureyev says, and Juno, helpless, does. He goes and puts away the ice cream and then comes right back and stands awkwardly between the couch and the door to the bathroom. He’s felt like a stranger in his own home for more than a week at this point, but never more so than right now.

“So, you had something to say to me?” Juno says, after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Yes,” Nureyev says, and he stands up from the couch and walks toward Juno.

Juno braces himself. Obviously he deserves whatever he’s about to get—probably a slap in the face, though he isn’t going to rule out a punch, and God knows Nureyev’s probably got a knife on him somewhere—but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt.

But Nureyev doesn’t attack him. Instead he reaches out and takes one of Juno’s hands, the one still freezing cold from clutching the ice cream, and leads him back to the couch, drawing him down to sit side-by-side. Juno, struck mute, lets him.

“I’m feeling better,” Nureyev says. “I seem to have shaken off the effects of the poison and its antidote, and so… I will need to be moving on again shortly.”

“Right,” Juno says, and his voice is too hoarse. He clears his throat, tries again. “Right, sure. Glad you’re better.”

“As am I,” Nureyev says. “But before I left, I wanted to clear the air, I suppose. First, I hope you will believe me— _trust_ me when I say that everything I wish to say to you today will be entirely honest.” Juno hesitates for a moment, then nods. Nureyev lets out a breath, smiles, and says, “It’s a relief to be honest because I want to, I will admit. But I digress: I said some things while I was under the influence that were… overly harsh. Obviously I can’t say they weren’t _true,_ at least as far as I saw it, but I shouldn’t have been cruel to you here, Juno. It’s clear from your avoidance that I made your own home unsafe for you, and I would like to apologize. I know how valuable having a retreat can be.”

Juno hesitates, then shrugs. “It’s just a shitty apartment, Nureyev.”

“It’s your _home_.”

“Is that why you came here?” Juno asks before thinking it through. He searches Nureyev’s face, the faint expression of surprise there, and decides to commit to the line of questioning. Might as well—they’re not going anywhere until Rita comes back, and who knows when that’ll be. “Did you think my home was going to be some sort of haven? Nothing about me is _safe_ , Nureyev. You must have figured that out.”

“You’d never hurt me, Juno,” Nureyev says.

Juno snorts. “Pretty sure I’ve _already_ proved you wrong on that one.” Then he thinks, _Unless_.

Nureyev seems to sense the way his thoughts have gone, perhaps from the way he has gone tense and still, and his hand tightens around Juno’s. “I suppose. I… I’ve lied to myself a great deal about what I felt about you leaving me that night, Juno. I have spent this whole last year trying desperately to convince myself that I was angry, because that was much easier than admitting that I was hurt. You see,” he says, his voice twisting toward wry and ironic, “I am usually the one doing the leaving, not the one left. I’d never imagined what it would be like on the other side of things, having met a person, vivid, dynamic, fascinating, and falling a little—more than a little—in love with them, and then....” He flicks his fingers. “Gone. Like something I’d dreamed.”

“I doubt I’m the sort of thing anyone dreams of,” Juno says. “You don’t have to flatter me, Nureyev. You’re leaving. It’s fine—I did it first, right?”

“ _Why_ , Juno?”

“What?”

Nureyev looks away, looks down. “Why did you leave? Of all the questions I have, that’s the one I want answered the most.”

“I…” Juno trails off, looks away himself. “I just couldn’t do it.”

“Do what? Leave with me? That wasn’t… I didn’t mean to give you an ultimatum, Juno, though I realize now that that’s what it sounded like. It wasn’t leave your life behind or nothing,” Nureyev says. “Or could you not _be_ with me, whatever it looked like?”

“I couldn’t be with you,” Juno says, though his voice is choked. He clears his throat again. “Not because of you. It’s a stupid cliche, but.” He looks up, meets Nureyev’s eyes. Lined delicately with eyeliner that Juno bought for him and intensely dark and deep. “It really wasn’t you. I’m toxic, Nureyev. You have to understand, I don’t… I can’t keep things like you. I _shouldn’t_.”

“Who says?” Nureyev demands, suddenly fierce. “Who is the one who decides something like that, Juno? You? Because it’s _bullshit_.”

The profanity in Nureyev’s mouth is a shock, and Juno draws in a sharp breath. “You don’t _know_ me, Nureyev. You don’t know what I’m like, what I’m like to be with and what I do to people who try to love me. You should just take my word for it, alright?”

“I don’t want to,” Nureyev says, and then stops, as if struck by his own words. After a moment he starts again, slower. “I don’t want to do that, Juno. I don’t want to stay away any more. I _want_ to know you—I’ve spent three days poking around in your apartment trying to do exactly that and all I’ve learned is that I can’t know you if you’re not _with_ me.”

“I’ve hurt you before,” Juno says. He realizes his hand is clenched tightly around Nureyev’s and tries to loosen his grip, worried he’s squeezing Nureyev’s fingers, but Nureyev doesn’t relax his own grip in return, doesn’t allow him to let go. “I’ll do it again.”

“I’ll probably do the same,” Nureyev says. “It happens. Hurting me once, or even twice, or three times… it doesn’t make you bad or toxic. It makes you human.”

“I know.” Juno uses his free hand to tap his own forehead. “I know that up here. But down here,” he taps his gut, “I know differently. I _feel_ differently. Bad things happen to the people around me, I drag them down, and you don’t deserve to have that happen to you. And I don’t deserve _you_ , Peter.”

Both of them sit frozen for a moment, the intimacy of Peter’s name sitting heavy between them, and then Peter leans forward and he lets go of Juno’s hand to cup Juno’s face in both of his palms. The touch is so gently unyielding that Juno flinches.

“You deserve what you need to be well, Juno,” Peter says.

“So, a stiff drink?” Juno says, and laughs weakly. He turns away from Peter’s hands, which fall away.

“More than that,” Peter says. “Friends. Comfort in your own home. _Love_ , Juno. You might be able to drown your feelings in drink, but—”

“But I’m still a pitiful lonely piece of shit, yeah,” Juno says, his tone harsh, and stands up. “I don’t _need_ those things, Nureyev. I survive just fine without them.”

“Back to _Nureyev,_ hm?” Peter says, and he stands as well. He doesn’t reach out again, lets Juno turn away from him, but he continues, “Surviving isn’t the same as having a good life. Believe me, I would know—I’ve lived many days filled with laughter and good wine and sunlight, that were nonetheless utterly empty. I think I’ve decided that that’s not enough for me any more. I can’t describe how much it hurt me to realize that you live an equally empty life, when we could have had each other, and that at least would have been a start to fullness.”

“I can’t fill your life, Nureyev.” Juno stares at the door to the bathroom, behind which he’d found Peter wretched and ill on his floor not so long ago. “I can’t even fill _myself_.”

“I think you should let me decide what I think will make my life better,” Peter says, and he steps up close behind Juno’s back, enough that Juno can feel a phantom of his heat. “ _Please_ , Juno. I’m still in love with you, and… and I think you still love me in return.”

Juno closes his eyes. What he says now is going to decide all of it, he thinks. He could destroy Peter so, so easily. Put on an ice-cold shell, hard as diamond, and turn around and just _destroy_ him. Hollow him out so thoroughly that he’ll never even pretend that he could ever be full again. Until all he can do is try to fill that sucking loneliness with shallow companionship and some search for meaning, until all his confidence in his self-worth is gone and all he has left is a blank desperate lust for oblivion, whether it comes through drugs or drink or death. He knows it can be done.

But he isn’t that person.

“Yeah,” Juno whispers. Louder, he says, “I guess I’m still a fool.”

He turns around and Peter is crying. Not prettily, not theatrically—Peter’s mouth is curled into a tight grimace and his eyes are half-shut and filled with tears that run down his face, and it’s a damn good thing that eyeliner is waterproof or he’d be a _real_ mess. But he is real, so real and so _honest_ , standing there and quaking under Juno’s gaze. He looks so overwhelmed that it’s all Juno can do to wipe some of the tears from his cheeks.

Peter steps forward and opens his arms, offering, asking, and Juno goes to him, clutches back as tightly as Peter does to him and lets Peter hide his tears in his shoulder, one of Juno’s hands resting on the back of his bent neck. It takes Peter a while to get himself under control, and when he does he doesn’t pull away, just lifts his head slightly to rest his cheek against Juno’s hair.

“I want to stay a few more days,” he says, then sniffles. “I want to get to know you, Juno. I want to see what this apartment is like when you’re actually _living_ in it, and I want… I want you to stop drowning yourself every night and stay in and _talk_ to me. I can’t make you. If you want, I’ll leave. I offered you that much before and I’ll offer it again. But I _am_ going to come back this time, whether I leave now or in three days or in two weeks. We have unfinished business, you and I.”

“You’ve got that right,” Juno says, and runs a hand down Peter’s back. His own face is wet, he realizes. He’d been so focused on holding Peter through the storm that he hadn’t even noticed his own emotions get the better of him. “Stay. I’ll let you keep the bed, even—”

“Only if you join me,” Peter says, and it should sound coy, but Juno knows he’s not talking about sex. Not that that’s off the table, probably, and not that Juno wouldn’t be interested, but… somehow Juno thinks that they’ve both been thinking a lot lately about just curling up together under his worn bedsheets and _sleeping_.

“Okay,” Juno agrees. “Okay. And I’ll clean up a bit.”

“I’d be happy to help.”

“Sure you would,” Juno says, and pulls back enough so that Peter, red-faced and swollen-eyed and sniffling and _beautiful_ can see it when he rolls his eyes. “Mr. Self Respect.”

“I was drugged!” Peter protests. “You can’t hold that against me.”

“Yeah, you were drugged to say exactly what you thought,” Juno says, and without consciously deciding to do so he leans up to kiss Peter’s cheek. Both of them pause, and then seem to decide unspoken that yes, that was fine.

“I was still under the influence,” Peter declares. “It wouldn’t stand up in court.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Juno says. “Listen, there’s… probably a lot we should still talk about before we make any more declarations of _any_ sort.”

“Probably.”

“But right now, I really want to kiss you.”

Peter smiles. “I’m all yours, detective.”

Juno leans up at the same time as Peter leans down, and their lips meet, a little awkward at first because it’s been a year and even then, they’d had so little time together. But then Peter tilts his head and Juno presses up a little further, and their mouths slide together perfectly, sharing breath between them. Juno slides his hand up from the back of Peter’s neck into his hair and deepens the kiss just a little, just enough to remind himself of how _good_ it feels to kiss this man who he’d been sure he’d never see again, and Peter makes a soft noise of such content that Juno nearly breaks right there.

When they separate, it feels like a second and an eon have passed, and Peter just smiles down at Juno and says, “Well then.”

“You too,” Juno says, like an idiot. He flushes slightly. “Uh. Right. So. I’m going to make dinner. And maybe you should call Rita, so that I don’t have to climb out the window to go grocery shopping tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan, my dear,” Peter says, and bows his head to kiss Juno once more, briefly, and then goes to find his comms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please imagine them eating ice cream from the same container and staring into each others’ eyes, thank u, goodbye
> 
> (also there is GOING to be a porn coda to this fic, but I'll post it separately, because some people may not want to read that! but, y'know, can't title a fic after the Hozier Blowjob Song and then have No Blowjobs)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are welcome as always!


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